‘My intention was to write a chapter in the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The stories are arranged in this order. I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard. I cannot do any more than this. I cannot alter what I have written.’ (Letter to Grant Richards [publisher], 5 May, 1906; Selected Letters, p.83)
‘If I eliminate them [i.e., the points to which Richards’s printer objected] what becomes of the chapter of the moral history of my country? I fight to retain them because I believe that in composing my chapter of moral history in exactly the way I have composed it I have taken the first step towards the spiritual liberation of my country. Reflect for a moment on the history of the literature of Ireland as it [88] now stands at present written in the English language before you condemn this genial illusion of mine, which, after all, has served me in the office of a candlestick during the writing of the book.’ (To Grant Richards, 20 May 1906; pp.88-89.)
‘It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs [89] my stories. … I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.’ (To Grant Richards, 23 June 1906; Selected Letters, 90)
[Before writing “The Dead”:] ‘Sometimes thinking of Ireland it seems to me that I have been unnecessarily harsh. I have reproduced (in [109] Dubliners at least) none of the attractions of the city for I have never felt at my ease in any city sice I left it except in Paris . I have not reproduced its ingenuous insularity and its hospitality. the latter “virtue” so far as I can see does not exist elsewhere in Europe. I have not been just to its beauty: for it is more beautiful naturally in my opinoni than what I have seen of England, Switzerland, France, Austria or Italy. Yet I know how useless these reflection are. For if I were to rewrite the book [...] I am sure I should find again what you call the Holy Ghost sitting in the ink-botle and the perverse devil of my literary conscience sitting on the hump of my pen.’ (Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann, 1975, pp.109-10.)
‘It [A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man] was the book of my youth [...] but Ulysses is the book of my maturity, and I prefer my maturity to my youth. [36] Ulysses is more satisfying and better resolved; for youth is a time of torment in which you can see nothing clearly. But in Ulysses I have tried to see life clearly, I think, and as a whole; for Ulysses was always my hero. Yes, even in my tormented youth, but it has taken me half a lifetime to reach the necessary equilibrium to express it, for my youth was exceptionally violent; painful and violent.’ (Arthur Power, Conversations with James Joyce, London; Millington 1974, pp.36-37; for longer extracts, see under Power in RICORSO.)
‘I just got a letter asking me why I don’t give Bloom a rest. The writer of it wants more Stephen. But Stephen no longer interests me to the same extent. He has a shape that can’t be changed.’ (Quoted in Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses [1934] Indiana UP 1960 [rep edn.], p.105).N
Note: Joyce goes on to tell Budgen that the reader ‘will know early in the book that SD’s mind is full like everyone else’s of borrowed words.’ (Letters, Vol. I, p.263.)
Ulysses as Homeric epic
‘It is my epic of two races (Israelite-Irish) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life). The character of Ulysses always fascinated me even when a boy. Imagine fifteen years ago I started writing it as a short story for Dubliners! For seven years I have been working at this book - blast it! It is also a kind of encyclopaedia. My intention is not only to render myth sub specie temporis nostri but also to allow each adventure (that is, each hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the structural scheme of the whole) should not only condition but even to create its own technique. Each adventure is so to say one person although it is composed of persons - as Aquinas relates of the angelic hosts.’ (Letter to Carlo Linati, 21 Sept. 1920; Letters [Viking, Vol I], pp.146-47 [in English only]; Selected Letters, 1975, p.270-71 [in Italian, with ftn. translation, p.271]; quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.535-36, ftn.; also [in part] in W. Y. Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce, 1959, p.132; Seon Givens, ed., Critical Heritage of James Joyce [1902-1927], London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970, Introduction, p.18, and Matthew Hodgart, James Joyce: A Student’s Guide, Routledge Kegan & Paul 1978, p.69.)
On “multiple styles”
‘The task I set myself technically in writing a book from eighteen different points of view and in as many styles, all apparently unknown or undiscovered by my fellow tradesmen, that and the nature of the legend chosen[,] would be enough to upset anyone’s mental balance.’ (Letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 24 June 1921; Selected Letters, 1975, pp.281-84; p.284.)
On “interior monologue”
‘From my point of view, it hardly matters whether the technique [interior monologue] is “veracious” or not; it has served me as a bridge over whcih to march my eighteen episodes, and, once I have got my troops across, the opposing forces can, for all I care, blow the bridge skyhigh.’ (Quoted in Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce’s Ulysses, 1952, p.28; rep. in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.543.)
On criticisms of Ulysses (as being ‘unfit to read’)
? ‘If Ulysses is not fit to read, life is not fit to live.’ (Joyce to Kathleen Murray, on hearing of her mother’s estimate of the novel; interview with Kathleen Murray; quoted in Patricia Hutchins, James Joyce’s World, p.139; cited in Ellmann, James Joyce, 1959; 1965 Edn., p.551.)